


for you i can do anything but fly

by Phoenix_Allura (Artemis_Autumn_Marie)



Series: Nix's Thominho Week 2019 [4]
Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arguments, Comfort, F/F, Fights, Hurt, Idiots in Love, M/M, Relationship Advice, Resolved Fights, Soul-Searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 13:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19476631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Autumn_Marie/pseuds/Phoenix_Allura
Summary: Thomas is stressed. He's got work to worry about (he needs the money; how else is he going to pay for tuition in the fall? Or the apartment? Or anything else?) the cat he wants to adopt, and of course his wonderful boyfriend, Minho, who puts up with all his long hours.Minho doesn't know why Thomas seems to be pulling away from him. Maybe this cat can help them learn to talk it out.





	for you i can do anything but fly

Minho had had his doubts for a while about his relationship with Thomas. They'd been good friends for years before they realized there was mutual pining.  
Maybe they were better off as friends.  
They hadn't sprouted wings yet.  
Wings were hallmarks of love and devotion. Hs parents had gotten theirs after a year of dating.  
He and Thomas were going on eighteen months.  
Nothing.  
It didn't seem to bother Thomas, and Minho knew that plenty of people lived in healthy, caring relationships without wings.  
(There's a difference between knowing and wanting.)  
And now Thomas was excited about this cat at work, had asked Minho to come to meet her to see if they'd like to adopt her.  
Minho had said yes.  
"One last shot at this," He promised himself. "One last try with Thomas, and, if it ends, it ends. No big fuss at all."  
"Hey, Minho, right?" Thomas said you'd be coming by to see that cat he's so fond of. It's nice to meet you, Minho, I've heard so much about you." That last part was said loud enough for someone in the back to hear.  
"Come on back. I must warn you, this cat is a bit of an odd looker. She's really pretty after you get past that." The boy--no older than fourteen--led him to the kennels.  
"Here she is. I'll go grab Thomas for you, he was working with a potential adopting family last I checked." The cat was certainly odd, but Minho had two dozen years' worth of memories about the strays his mother liked to feed. They had been odd colors too, due to inbreeding of marked cats. This one was inbred, but somewhere along the line, the inbreeding had been diluted slightly. She was large, almost overly so, and was a rich turquoise mixed with a dusty green. She had one of the famed marks on her forehead: A white circle. Minho crouched down to pet her. She preened at the touch, and Minho smiled. He knew how to deal with cats.  
"Beautiful, isn't she?" Thomas asked. "She's smart, too, very independent."  
"You want to keep her, don't you?" Minho could see it on his face.  
"Yeah," Thomas scratched his ear; Minho absently noted the bandaids covering his arm. He'd been handling the rougher animals again. "But I didn't want to spring her on you by just bringing her home, I wanted to make sure you wanted her too."  
"Maybe we should do a trial run? Take her home for a few days and see how it goes." Minho suggested. They both knew that meant he was halfway to yes.  
"Want me to get to work on the take-home papers?" The kid had turned up again.  
"Just bring them to my office, thanks, Chuck." Thomas picked up the cat carrier. "I hope you know some good cat names."  
"She doesn't have a name?"  
"Not yet. We've presented her with a few, and she said no to all of them."  
"Well, we'll just have to keep trying then."  
"Of course." Thomas grinned at him, and stars, Minho wanted this to work.  
(Wanting is different from acting.)  
They filled out the papers and Minho took the cat home. Thomas would join them in a few hours and they would work on homes.

Thomas drove home with the radio off. He was worried--worried about Minho. A few weeks ago, about when the cat had been dropped off, he'd been telling stories from his childhood and his mom's penchant for adopting strays, but he'd hardly reacted to the cat Thomas had quickly grown fond of. She really was beautiful, even with colored cats being less of a rarity in their world than even ten years ago, and came from pedigree. She had been dropped off with all her paperwork and a note: The family who had adopted a twelve-week-old kitten couldn't take care of a twenty-week-old kitten who had doubled in size. She was young, sure, but the size of a full-grown cat. It was hard to imagine her as a kitten. Since then, she hadn't responded to any attempts to place her in a new home and even stopped answering to her name. Thomas hoped that he and Minho could be the solution to that problem, but he now he was thinking that he had been wrong.

They'd only planned to keep the cat (kitten, he'd learned from Thomas) for a few days, really. But she was cute and cuddly and playful so after three works they found themselves signing adoption papers.  
Minho couldn't help but think that this was a stopgap, that teasing arguments over the kitten's name (Emilina Cassira, princess of Glade Acre Apartment A27) were just replacements for actual arguments.  
That he and Thomas were falling apart and instead of trying to fix it, they were just hoping it would go away.  
(It wouldn't.)  
But they were happy, for now, and Minho knew he loved Thomas.  
It didn't go away.  
Rather, it all blew up quite spectacularly, right in their faces.

"You're always working, Thomas, most days I feel as if you care about those animals more than me!" Minho was careful to keep his voice low. Couldn't have the neighbors investigating a simple argument between partners--it had happened before. He folded his arms across his chest, unwilling to back down.  
"Minho, you know I don't. But we need the money, I'm still in school and we can't afford to miss our rent this month. We'll get evicted if we do." Thomas was pleading with him, moving closer with careful steps, and Minho knew what he was saying made sense, but he missed his boyfriend. Missed sleeping in together, missed Thomas's shy kisses, missed dancing around the kitchen.  
"We do need the money, but you make enough to take one day every few weeks. So why don't you?" One hand slammed onto the counter, the other at his side.  
"Minho, please..." Thomas sounded like his heart was breaking, one hand pressed to it like it meant help.  
(Minho's had been shattering for months, with each morning they woke up wingless.)  
"You're cheating on me, aren't you? Or you're lying when you say you love me." Stars, Minho missed easy smiles and Thomas's eyes bright with joy. Not with tears, like they were now. He missed the feeling of knowing that he was irreversibly, unequivocally in love with his best friend, with or without wings.  
"Fine. You wanna play that game? I've never understood why you think wings make or break a relationship, or why we would get ours after a year like your parents did. But I listen when you explain how important they are to you, and I support you with your coaching job and running clubs. I love you, Minho, but it's pretty clear you don't feel the same way." Thomas had started throwing his things into his school bag.  
"Goodbye, Minho." Emilina stared at him for a moment, then padded away to where their office was--Thomas used it the most.  
It looked like the cat hated him too.

Thomas was close to tears as he ran to Teresa's. He worked so much because they needed to save! Because he was going to school in the fall! And Minho acted like he did it as an escape, as a way to ignore him and get away. And then to say he was cheating when he knew full well that Thomas didn't like sex and that he liked having only one romantic connection at a time.  
"Thomas? What the hell happened?" Brenda opened Teresa's door.  
"I had a fight with Minho."  
"I'll get the ice cream. Teresa! Your brother's crying on the couch!" Thomas heard running footsteps and then someone landed on him.  
"What did he say." It wasn't even a question, it was a demand. Brenda handed him a tub of ice cream with the spoon already in it, sitting beside him.  
"Want to talk or just cry and eat ice cream?"  
"Cry and eat ice cream for now." Thomas managed, hunching into himself. Minho had just... crushed his heart, all in one go.  
He didn't want to linger on that more than he was going to already.  
"I'm going to finish making dinner." Brenda stood up, allowing Teresa to shift to the spot next to him. "You're staying here for the night and one of us will get your stuff tomorrow." Brenda gestured around the room to the girls standing around. Thomas recognized a few of them.  
"If Emilina wants to stay, let her." Thomas managed.  
"Who?" Sonya asked.  
"The cat," Teresa answered. "You absolutely adore that cat, Tom, I'm not leaving her if I can help it."  
"She'll scratch, and you and Brenda are both allergic to cats anyway."  
"We've got allergy meds, we'll be fine." Teresa rubbed his back for a moment. "I'm going to help Brenda." Neither of them had ever been that great at comforting; they preferred to take action over anything else.  
"He's upset that you don't have wings, isn't he?" Harriet asked softly, stealing some of his ice cream. He didn't have the energy to push her away. "I've known him his whole life."  
"Yeah. He said that I must be cheating on him or lying when I say I love him."  
"Because you don't have wings?"  
"That's part of it. At first, he was mad because I work too much, I guess."  
"You need the money." Harriet was one of the junior financial advisors at Paige Hall, the main branch of their college. "You won't be able to stick through the year if you don't work sixty hours a week, and that's just for tuition."  
"I'm working ninety, across three jobs. Minho doesn't know about the other two. He brings in enough to cover a month's food and a quarter of the rent in two weeks, but with my one job we have nothing to save."  
"Why doesn't he know?"  
"Whenever I try to mention it, he thinks I'm asking him to get another job."  
"Which he should if you're working ninety hours a week." Sonya looked up from her phone. "There are 168 hours in a week, Thomas, you're left with 78 to do with as you please. When do you sleep." Thomas ducked his head. He caught naps at work sometimes, when it was slow...  
"Teresa, your brother isn't sleeping!" Harriet called into the kitchen. Teresa sprinted back out.  
"Traitor." Thomas hissed at Harriet. He'd stopped crying, he noticed, and the ice cream had made its way to Sonya, who was sharing with another girl. Harriet shrugged, a smirk on her face.  
"I'll take his feet if you get his shoulders." She said to Teresa, and Thomas found himself being picked up (and why hadn't he let Harriet introduce him to her personal trainer again?) and carried into the guest bedroom.  
"You stay here," Teresa said gravely, "And you will sleep. When do you work in the morning?"  
"Nine thirty."  
"Then you will wake up no later than eight, and you will shower and have breakfast. And I will drive you to work." Her tone left no room for argument.  
"Don't dream without sleep, Teresa." Thomas blurted. Her lips turned up at the mention of their childhood phrase.  
"And don't sleep without pleasant dreams." She finished. Thomas kicked off his shoes and tugged the blanket up to his neck. He was asleep in minutes.

Minho was pacing the floor. His dinner sat abandoned. The door stayed closed.  
(He feared the door would never open to Thomas's smile again.)  
He threw his hands up in the air. Thomas was working almost the whole week, came home, ate, spent more time with Emilina than him, and then left for work again, what was Minho supposed to think? That Thomas enjoyed his company? That he wanted to stay together? That he wasn't cheating and lying? That he cared?  
But Minho knew better. When Thomas came home, he was often working: planning a new route for his runners or looking for another job that was flexible (At this point, he was even considering Uber.). It was as much his fault as it was Thomas's, for not reaching out or saying anything.  
Why did communication have to be so hard?  
He knew where Thomas was. He'd be at Teresa's, maybe crying because of what Minho had said.  
(He would have taken a shattered heart over the heaviness that covered him any day.)

Thomas moved into Teresa's guest bedroom for a few days, choosing to ignore Minho's calls and answer his texts curtly. He knew they'd have to talk this out--they'd had little spats here and there but nothing as big as this; nothing where hurtful things were purposefully said and not to tease.  
Of course, they would only talk it out if they decided to stay together.  
Emiliana seemed to spend her time going to between the apartments, and Thomas didn't know what to make of that. He'd figured she might have a preference either way and it didn't appear to be so.  
Thomas knew they had to talk, but he didn't want to, not yet. (Not to mention that he was still working ninety hours a week. If he had to find a new place or rent theirs on his own, he'd definitely need the extra money.)  
"You have to talk to him," Teresa told him one day. "I love you, and don't mind having you around, but you're moping, Tom, moping. Please go talk to him so you can have one big mope session or come back happily for your stuff."  
"Healthy relationships need communication, Thomas," Brenda said. "You might have argued, and there were certainly better ways for Minho to express that he was feeling neglected. But right now you're both in limbo--you need to decide if you're over or going to try and work this out."  
Newt took him out for a hot chocolate. "You've a right to be mad, Tommy, but now you've had time to calm your temper so text Minho and set up a time to talk."  
Gally even sat him down. "Listen, you might not be my best friend--" Thomas chose not to say that for years all they'd done was antagonize each other--"But you and Minho are great guys and you both deserve to be happy. Stop being stupid and go talk to him."  
In the end, it was Emilina who convinced him. She was messing around in the closet, climbing in and out of the boxes he'd left sitting open.  
"Hey, hey, hey," He crossed to her. "Don't mess with that. Oh, you got into the box with Minho's stuff..." He stopped and stared at the item on top. It was from their high school days. Minho had given it to him in their junior year.  
His letterman jacket.  
'PARK' was spelled out on the back in big blue letters, and Minho's sports were listed under that, in much smaller print. His captaincy pins were still on the front, and Thomas remembered the day he'd gotten the cross-country one. Thomas had pinned the badge on himself, grinning up at his boyfriend and kissing him.   
He'd been so happy.  
They both had been.  
Thomas pulled the jacket on; it had been far too long in the sleeves and too big in the shoulders for him as a junior and senior in high school, but now it fit much better.  
Thomas remembered the day Minho had given it to him, casually, like it was nothing. It'd been homecoming night; before the dance, they went out to eat and outside, walking to the dance, Minho had slid it over his shoulders. (They made the front page of their school newspaper and followed it up by making the running for cutest couple for the second year in a row. (They won that year and the next.))  
Decision made, Thomas took the jacket off and put it back in the box. Then he pulled out his phone and texted Minho.

Minho hadn't known what to expect when he arrived at the cafe; all of Thomas's messages had been as short as possible. He got there early, hoping that this talk would be a good one.  
The boxes hit the table with a thud.  
Not so good, then.  
Minho couldn't see Thomas behind the boxes.  
"This, Minho, is all the stuff you've ever given me." Thomas tapped the first two boxes, still behind them.  
"This is the stuff that's yours,"   
"And this," Thomas stepped out from behind boxes and Minho's heart caught in his chest. "Is all the stuff I took when I moved out, that I'm bringing back to the apartment."  
Thomas was wearing his letterman jacket. The one from high school.  
"Guess you have to get another one of these, huh?" Thomas was smiling at him, the way he used to when they were just happy kids with no worries except for homework. "This one won't fit you anymore, and besides, it's been mine for years." Thomas moved the boxes and sat down.  
"Thomas..."  
"I know, Minho. You were feeling abandoned, neglected, and that's my fault. But I have something to tell you, too. I've been running on fumes for months. I've got three jobs; I'm working ninety hours a week to pay my tuition. You have a full ride but I'm working with a conditional academic scholarship that covers a third of my tuition each year. Add that to my portion of the rent and food and everything else, and the fact that we're saving to move, and I've got almost nothing left. No time, no energy, no money. Nothing."  
"You drop one of your jobs, I'll get another one," Minho said immediately. How had he noticed this? Of course Thomas didn't have time for him. "And you've got a harder course load in the fall than I do, you're cutting way back on hours then too."  
"Alright. Two jobs puts me at sixty hours a week, and if I cut back in the fall I'm at thirty."  
"That's better," Minho said. "I don't you running yourself into the ground, Thomas, we need to work together to make this work."  
"Yeah, I've been getting that a lot these days." Thomas laughed. "What do you say we go home? I took the day off, and I could really use a good cuddle session with my boyfriend."  
"That sounds amazing," Minho knew he was grinning. He kissed Thomas over three boxes each and they made their way home, giddy in a way they hadn't been in years.

They woke up with wings a year later to the day.  
"Happy we stayed together, Minho?" Thomas teased; his wings were mostly blue and brown with the edges of his feathers being green, Minho's color.  
"Of course," Minho's wings were the inverse of Thomas's: Mostly green and brown, with blue on the edges. "I've never been happier."

(On their college graduation day, Minho gave Thomas his college letterman jacket. Thomas gave Minho a ring.)  
(They never did buy a house, instead moving into a much larger apartment.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is day four of Thominho week! I hope you enjoyed. Comment your thought, please!  
> Thanks for reading,  
> Phoenix


End file.
